Well, at least in high summer, I love it. That’s my stand of Callirhoe involucrata, purchased from Gulley Greenhouse on the advice of their plant-picker in 2007. Without much supplemental water (I throw it a bucket or two if it’s really arid when the plant is trying to get going again in spring), two half-gallon pots of this plant have spread to take over an entire corner and much of the flagstone bath to my backyard gate. It’s like a really pushy friend or sibling, doing what it’s gonna do no, matter what I say or how I’d like to contain it. But it’s a beautiful friend or sibling, and once I let it have it’s way, I’m glad I did. That’s what you get when you heed local advice.

These bright fuchsia blooms are unstoppable, drinking in the summer sun, closing up shop promptly at sunset. They haven’t fussed at my crappy soil. My lackadaisical mulching. My “oh god I don’t have time” weeding. They just spread merrily on.

Susan Clotfelter has always played in the dirt, but got dragged into gardening as an obsession when she reclaimed her hell corner: a weed-infested patch of clay inhabited by one tough, lonely lilac and a thicket of weeds. Along with training as a Colorado State University Extension Master Gardener volunteer, she dug deeper with beds of herbs and lettuce at her home and rows of vegetables wherever she could borrow land. She writes for The Denver Post and other publications and appears on community radio.

Julie's passion for gardening began in spring of 2000 when she bought a fixer-upper in Denver's Park Hill neighborhood, and realized that the landsape was in desperate need of some TLC. During the drought of 2003, she decided to give up on bluegrass and xeriscape her front yard. She wrote about the journey in the Rocky Mountain News, in a series called Mud, Sweat & Tears: A Xeriscape story. Julie is an avid veggie gardener as well as a seasoned water gardener.